The Notary at Mother’s Birthday Supper

Just her name. One line.

If the house were going to the three of us, I thought, where were we?

I cut the first piece, a corner, because Mom likes a corner, and I set it in front of her. I cut the second piece and I did not give it to Kyle, or to the children.

I walked it around the table and set it down in front of Hailey.

“You’ve been sitting here smelling this for an hour,” I said. “You’re company first.”

“Oh,” she said. “Thank you. You didn’t have to.”

“Hailey, can I ask you something? I’ve never been around this before. Before somebody signs a thing in front of you, can it be read out loud?”

She looked up at me. She was twenty-six, I found out later. She had a careful face, the kind of girl who was a hall monitor and did not enjoy it but did it right.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “Anybody can ask for that.”

“Would you mind? Every line. Mom’s glasses are on her chain and mine are in the car, and I’d like the kids to hear how these things go.”

“Tess,” Kyle said. He was smiling. “It’s a page of legal. Nobody wants to hear that. The ice cream’s melting.”

“The ice cream’s in the freezer,” I said. “It’s one page. You said two minutes.”

I was still holding the knife, with frosting on it. I laid it across the cake pan.

Mom had not touched her corner piece. She folded her hands on the edge of the table.

“Go ahead, honey,” she said to Hailey. “I’d like to hear it.”

Every line

Hailey wiped her fingers on her napkin. She reached across, and Kyle, after a second, slid the paper to her.

“I should say first,” she said, “I’m not an attorney. I can’t tell anybody what a document means or whether to sign it. All I can do is read what’s printed.”

“That’s all I’m asking,” I said.

She cleared her throat. She read the way she must have read aloud in school, evenly, giving each word the same weight.

“Quitclaim Deed. Marian L. Novak, a single person, Grantor, in consideration of One Dollar and other valuable consideration received from Grantee, does hereby quitclaim and convey unto Kyle R. Novak, Grantee, all of Grantor’s right, title and interest in the following described real estate in Burt County, Nebraska.”

She stopped there, finding her place. It did not matter. The kitchen had already heard it.

Kyle R. Novak. Grantee.

Not Kyle and Tess and Jodi. Not the children of. One name.

“A tract of land located in the Northeast Quarter of Section Fourteen,” Hailey read, “Township Twenty-One North, Range Nine East of the Sixth Principal Meridian, containing eleven and two hundredths acres, more or less, together with all buildings and improvements thereon.”

That was the house. That was the barn Dad reroofed the summer I was ten, and the cedar windbreak he planted in a row the year Kyle was born, and the pasture the Petersen boy rents for his calves, and the kitchen we were sitting in. The county had it on the tax statement at three hundred and ten thousand dollars.

For one dollar.

“Executed this blank day of October,” Hailey read. She looked at the bottom of the page. “And then there’s a signature line for Mrs. Novak, and the acknowledgment for me to fill in. That’s everything on it.”